. . . I am convinced that it should occupy a high position on the desk of policymakers. . . This book constitutes a good state-of-the-art study in this field and paves the way for further research in this direction. Marie-Claire Villeval, Economic Record This attractive publication is carried out as a clear attempt to gain access to a wider audience, relaxing formal and technical details, which makes the lecture easier. . . An international comparison of literature or educational and labour experiences is provided in every contribution in the book, helping to obtain a wider perspective of the problems tackled. Carmen García and Julio López, Education Economics This book makes a novel contribution to economics of education in several key respects. It highlights a broad number of crucial factors over the individual s life cycle that underlie inequalities in education and in the labour market. . . It is amazing how limited our knowledge is about these interactions despite their high priority in national as well as EU-level policy-making. This is a timely book concerned with topics of high policy relevance. Moreover, the authors have well succeeded in their attempt to write "in a style that makes this work accessible to a wider audience", using the editor s words. It is most important that academics as well as politicians are made aware of the considerable knowledge gaps that still prevail in our understanding of the role of education and training for the individual s success or failure in school and in working life. Rita Asplund, The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy (ETLA), Finland In the last decade, changes occurring in the demand for skills have produced significant effect on the functioning of labour markets in Europe and elsewhere. The challenge posed by a knowledge based society for sustained growth has been at the centre of the European strategy for employment and has important implications for the design of labour market policies. This book brings together a wide range of contributions written by leading experts on key issues such as: schooling systems, transition from school to work and lifelong learning, thereby providing an essential reference for both researchers and policymakers. Claudio Lucifora, Università Cattolica, Italy Human Capital Over the Life Cycle synthesises comparative research on the processes of human capital formation in the areas of education and training in Europe, in relation to the labour market. The book proposes that one of the most important challenges faced by Europe today is to understand the link between education and training on the one hand and economic and social inequality on the other. The authors focus the analysis on three main aspects of the links between education and social inequality: educational inequality, differences in access to labour markets and differences in lifelong earnings and training. Almost all the stages in the life cycle are tracked from early childhood to stages late in the working life: firstly the characteristics and effects of schooling systems, then the transitions from school to work and, finally, human capital and the working career. Academics and researchers of European studies, labour economics and the economics of education will all find this novel and analytically sound book of interest, as will sociologists and policymakers in Europe.

This paper summarizes the important contributions of the new life cycle human capital literature and demonstrates that many of these results can be derived more simply than in their original presentations. Within three period discrete-time framework it is demonstrated how the optimal pattern of human capital investment over the life cycle depends upon the choice of the objective function, the life cycle of leisure, and the extent of nonmarket benefits of human capital. The paper offers sufficient conditions for the optimality of a profile of monotonically declining investment activity over the life cycle.

This book draws on recent theoretical contributions in the area of global talent management and presents an up to date and critical review of the key issues which MNEs face. Beyond exploring some key overarching issues in global talent management the book discuses the key emerging issue around global talent management in key economies such as China, India, the Middle East and Eastern Europe. In contrast to many of the currently available texts in the area of global talent management which are descriptive and lacking theoretical rigor, this text emphasizes the critical understanding of global talent management in an organizational context. Drawing on contributions from the leading figures in the field, it will aid students, practitioners and researchers alike in gaining a well grounded and critical overview of the key issues surrounding global talent management from a theoretical and practical perspective.

We develop and estimate a life-cycle model in which individuals make decisions about consumption, human capital investment, and labor supply and use it to analyze changes in Social Security rules. The most important aspect of our paper is human capital towards the end of the life cycle which responds to changes in the rules. Retirement arises endogenously as part of the labor supply decision. The model allows for both an endogenous wage process through human capital investment (which is typically assumed exogenous in the retirement literature), an endogenous retirement decision (which is typically assumed exogenous in the human capital literature), and accounts for the Social Security system. We estimate the model using indirect inference to match the life-cycle profiles of employment and measured wages from the SIPP data. The model replicates the main features of the data--in particular the large increase in measured wages and small increase in labor supply at the beginning of the life cycle as well as the small decrease in measured wages but large decrease in labor supply at the end of the life cycle. We use the model to estimate the effects of various changes to tax and Social Security policies and show that allowing for human capital accumulation is critical.

This edited collection explores the links between human capital (both in the form of health and in the form of education), demographic change, and economic growth. Using empirical as well as theoretical perspectives, the authors investigate several important issues in the context of human capital, namely population ageing, inequality, public policy, and long-term economic development. Ultimately, they demonstrate that the accumulation of human capital is of crucial importance to long-run economic growth.

How much does life-cycle human capital accumulation vary across countries? This paper seeks to answer this question by studying U.S. immigrants, who come from a wide variety of countries but work in a common labor market. We document that returns to potential experience among U.S. immigrants are higher on average for workers coming from rich countries than for those coming from poor countries. To understand this fact we build a model of life-cycle human capital accumulation that features three potential theories, working respectively through cross-country differences in: selection, skill loss, and human capital accumulation. To distinguish between theories, we use new data on the characteristics of immigrants and non-migrants from a large set of countries. We conclude that the most likely theory is that immigrants from poor countries accumulate relatively less human capital in their birth countries before migrating. Our findings imply that life cycle human capital stocks are on average much larger in rich countries than poor countries.

What circumstances or behaviors turn poverty into a cycle that perpetuates across generations? The answer to this question carries especially important implications for the design and evaluation of policies and projects intended to reduce poverty. Yet a major challenge analysts and policymakers face in understanding poverty traps is the sheer number of mechanisms—not just financial, but also environmental, physical, and psychological—that may contribute to the persistence of poverty all over the world. The research in this volume explores the hypothesis that poverty is self-reinforcing because the equilibrium behaviors of the poor perpetuate low standards of living. Contributions explore the dynamic, complex processes by which households accumulate assets and increase their productivity and earnings potential, as well as the conditions under which some individuals, groups, and economies struggle to escape poverty. Investigating the full range of phenomena that combine to generate poverty traps—gleaned from behavioral, health, and resource economics as well as the sociology, psychology, and environmental literatures—chapters in this volume also present new evidence that highlights both the insights and the limits of a poverty trap lens. The framework introduced in this volume provides a robust platform for studying well-being dynamics in developing economies.